


And So He Did

by QueenlyPirate



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Angst, and then being told she's missing just out of the blue, idk really, just a what if, like what if adrien lost his mom at a young age
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-01
Updated: 2016-06-01
Packaged: 2018-07-11 12:37:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7051822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenlyPirate/pseuds/QueenlyPirate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Adrien, your mother...your mother is gone.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	And So He Did

He’s only six and the world is a wonderful place full of happy things and maman always comes back late at night because of her work and sometimes papa too if he comes back home at all. 

Sometimes, when Adrien is being bad and not following the rules, he’ll try to stay up as late as possible to see him walk through the door. He’s only ever done it once, but he remembers seeing how tired papa looked, shoulders hunched over like he just ran around the entire house, the skin under his eyes a deep purple like the time Adrien ran into the piano and had a long bruise on his shin for _weeks_ , and hair sticking up like maman had rubbed his head like a puppy. That’s what she does to Adrien anyway.

But one day Nathalie comes into his room without knocking, something she doesn’t really do unless she’s in a hurry or she has bad news to give him like when he has to model _twice_ in one day. He doesn’t like modeling all that much, but it makes his parents happy so it makes him proud to do it. Her eyes are red, he notices first, and her hair is messy and standing up like someone rubbed a balloon against it.

“Adrien.” She addresses him like he’s a grown up and he likes it because it makes him feel like papa. “Oh, how do I say this,” she mutters under her breath like he isn’t supposed to hear her but he does anyway. He looks away and tries to pretend he didn’t though, to make her feel better. She rubs a hand over her face and her chin wiggles. “Adrien, your mother...your mother is gone.” 

That’s all?

“When will she be back?” he asks, little voice bubbling with excitement. Maybe she went on a trip, maybe she would bring something back for him like she did that last time she went overseas. Maybe she went to Disney World!

Nathalie frowns at him and simply shakes her head. “I can’t do this, I’m sorry. Your mother is gone. We don’t know when she’ll be back.” She turns around and he hears her mutter something again, but this time he doesn’t catch it. 

It's been a few weeks since maman left, but that’s okay. There was one trip where she was gone for nearly two months, but he hadn't been lonely because papa made sure he was home to eat dinner with Adrien and tuck him in bed. He had never read him stories but that was okay because he had kissed him goodnight and didn’t mess his hair up like maman did before she turned the lights off.

But eventually those weeks turn into months and Adrien is getting anxious. Whenever he gets done with another photoshoot, he rushes to the door and flings it open all the while yelling “are you back?” Papa doesn’t approve of it and tells him as such. Adrien doesn’t remember his papa being this strict before, but he misses maman too so he understands. 

Eventually a year passes and Adrien still doesn’t really understand where maman is. She usually calls if her trips take a long time. Or she sends post cards with funny jokes on them. “Just chile-n in south america” is his favorite because she had added a scratch-n-sniff sticker and he loves those.

He doesn’t remember how, but he walked in on papa crying one time. He had his hands pressed into his eyes and his glasses were pushed all the way up his forehead. But his hands didn’t do a very good job at catching the tears because they had slipped down his face and onto his pants. “Papa?” And he had jumped as he spotted Adrien standing in the door way. He wiped his eyes quickly and simply told Adrien to knock next time.

There wasn’t a next time.

Two years pass and Adrien is almost 10 now but maman hasn’t sent any presents or made any calls and Adrien doesn’t want to give up, but he feels the doubt creeping into the back of his mind. ‘Where is she?’ He doesn’t like to admit it, but if it wasn’t for the picture on the walls, her face wouldn’t be as clear. Sometimes he forgets the straightness of her nose or the slant of her eyes. Never her smile though, no he remembers that the most. Papa reminds him occasionally that his resembles hers. He looks in the mirror on his bad days and tries to find it himself, but he doesn’t see it. Eventually he stops looking.

It's when he’s twelve that he finally loses what little hope he had left when he realizes that he has spent half his life not knowing the woman he had adored so much as a child (well, smaller child). And even then it had really only been three years worth of memories, all of which were fading fast and he had tried to cling on to them desperately and write them down, but he was losing them too quickly to the point where he just couldn’t take it anymore. With the last sentence in his memory journal (titled: “Maman”), Adrien had chucked it across the room in a fit of rage. Why had she left him? Why had she left papa? Did she not love them anymore? Was she even alive?

His tears were hot that night when he taped the fraying journal back together, but his body was ice and his fingers did a sloppy job at keeping the pages straight. But it was intact and he went to bed where he dreamt of warm laughter and crinkled eyes.

He realizes his father is distant and hardly ever speaks to him unless its about modeling or following his orders. He can hardly remember the times in the past where the man had ever even smiled in his direction. He had tried to keep a journal of his memories for his father too, but after struggling for a month just to fill _two_ pages, he gave up. 

Sometimes he thinks to himself that maybe maman hadn’t loved him. Maybe she wasn’t happy when she left. Maybe she’s happy now.

Maybe she started a new family.

It's when he is fifteen that he finally decides that he can’t take the suffocating emptiness of the house anymore. It had lost all its warmth years ago and if he spends even just one more _hour_ in that house learning about the history of France, he was going to rip his hair out right then and there. It would ruin his modeling career while also evoking some kind of reaction from his father. Two birds with one stone. But he decides to enroll in a public school instead.

Halfway through the school year he realizes he’s happier than he’s been since he was eleven, before the bitter doubts of adolescence wreaked havoc on his mind. He has friends and, for once in his life, he has _freedom_. And the memories of his mother become less harsh, less sad, and sometimes he feels a warmth envelope him. It's when he sees her in ladybug’s smile that he feels like he can forgive her. She is gone, she had left for whatever reason, and like her, Adrien had to move on. And so he did.

**Author's Note:**

> lol this is old but i fixed it up a bit so here you go


End file.
